Hundreds of employees and managers of ByteDancethe company that owns TikTok had or has a working relationship with i media controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. This was revealed by a Forbes survey that casts more than a few shadows on the ties between the social network popular among the very young and the government of China.
The media list includes Xinhua News Agency, China Radio International and China Central/China Global Television. Any organization that the US government considers, formally or de facto, to be controlled by China.
former men of Beijing today, they hold some of the most important positions in the ByteDance org chart: there are people responsible for setting the site’s policies, or coordinating the app’s monetization strategy. Forbes cites the case of a ‘content strategy manager’ of TikTok with a past in china.org.cn and who today posts on LinkedIn against the “obsession” for human rights.
At least 15 people will continue to work for the government media of china. Too bad, as a spokesperson for ByteDance confirms, the company’s standard contracts don’t allow it in theory: “our employees cannot have other work obligations, especially if they could create a conflict of interest”. ByteDance has chosen not to respond to the Forbes inquiry, hiding behind a “No Comment.”
The transition from the world of media to that of social media is not exactly unusual, similar paths can also be found by sifting through the resumes of many Facebook or Twitter employees. But one thing is the independent media of a Western state, another is the media controlled by an authoritarian government like Beijing’s. TikTok has repeatedly had to defend itself against accusations of having ambiguous relations with China in the past, for example when the Trump administration was just one step away from barring the same fate as Huawei to ByteDance. The White House had tried to force the Chinese giant to sell its western division to an American company. In contention were Microsoft and Oracle. In the end nothing came of it.
Source: Lega Nerd
